Why is there a second Fullmetal Alchemist anime, Brotherhood?
The 2003 series ended differently because Hiromu Arakawa requested an original ending while her monthly manga was still young. That left her actual story, all 108 chapters of it, without a faithful screen version. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood was conceived to fix exactly that: a second adaptation that directly follows the entire manga. Arakawa announced it herself in a note inside volume 20 of the manga, released in August 2008, and production began that year. It was not a remake chasing nostalgia. It was the first time the finished plot, including Father, the Xing cast, the Briggs arc, and the Promised Day, could be adapted at all, because most of it had not existed when the first anime was made.
Same studio, new team
How the production differedBones animated both series, and the continuity nearly stops there. The 2003 series was directed by Seiji Mizushima, written by Sho Aikawa, with music by Michiru Oshima. Brotherhood was directed by Yasuhiro Irie, written by Hiroshi Onogi, with music by Akira Senju: a new creative leadership hired for a different assignment, fidelity instead of invention. The voices carried over where it counted. Romi Park and Rie Kugimiya returned as Edward and Alphonse Elric, and much of the English dub cast returned as well. Even the title does separation work. In Japan the second series is billed as Hagane no Renkinjutsushi: Fullmetal Alchemist, with the English title set as a subtitle to distinguish it from 2003; the English release gives it the subtitle Brotherhood.
The timing was the boldest part. Brotherhood premiered on April 5, 2009 and ran for 64 episodes to July 4, 2010, while the manga was still running. The final manga chapter appeared on June 11, 2010, weeks before the anime finale. That was possible because, as the manga neared its end, Arakawa showed Irie her plans for the ending, so the anime staff was already producing the final episodes in May 2010 and the two versions closed on near matching dates, with the same ending this time.
What changed on screen
The restored storyBrotherhood restores everything the 2003 production could not use: Ling Yao and the Xing alkahestry plot, May Chang, Olivier Mira Armstrong and Fort Briggs, Father as the Homunculi's creator, and the manga's account of Ishval and the Promised Day. Critics noticed one trade off in the opening stretch. IGN's D. F. Smith judged the first 14 episodes quicker paced than their 2003 counterparts, reading the compression as the series presuming a viewer already familiar with the early material, and Anime News Network reviewers found the retread cost some suspense. That is a critic's reading of the pacing, printed here as such, not a stated production plan. The payoff critics agreed on was the ending: faithfully adapted, and widely called satisfying, with the Fandom Post calling it a virtually perfect ending to an outstanding series. Brotherhood holds a 100 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 14 reviews, and spent years at or near the top of fan rating charts, a second life the 2003 series, by its author's own design, never tried to have.
THE FIRST VOLUME
Fullmetal Alchemist, in print